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Cosmos and Pornografia: Two Novels
Here are two major works by the famed Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz. The first, Cosmos, a metaphysical thriller, revolves around an absurd investigation. It is set in provincial Poland and narrated by a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns, and whose voice is dense with the richly palpable description that characterizes Gombrowicz's writing. The second, Pornografia, explores the sinister effect the young can have on the old. To serve their own secret eroticism, two aging intellectuals encourage a young couple to commit murder. Although the adolescents are the weapons used to commit the crime, the four become conspirators before the deed is done.
362 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1985
27 people are currently reading
464 people want to read
About the author
Witold Gombrowicz
113 books1,034 followersGombrowicz was born in Małoszyce, in Congress Poland, Russian Empire to a wealthy gentry family. He was the youngest of four children of Jan and Antonina (née Kotkowska.) In 1911 his family moved to Warsaw. After completing his education at Saint Stanislaus Kostka's Gymnasium in 1922, he studied law at Warsaw University (in 1927 he obtained a master’s degree in law.) Gombrowicz spent a year in Paris where he studied at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales; although he was less than diligent in his studies his time in France brought him in constant contact with other young intellectuals. He also visited the Mediterranean.
When he returned to Poland he began applying for legal positions with little success. In the 1920s he started writing, but soon rejected the legendary novel, whose form and subject matter were supposed to manifest his 'worse' and darker side of nature. Similarly, his attempt to write a popular novel in collaboration with Tadeusz Kępiński turned out to be a failure. At the turn of the 20's and 30's he started to write short stories, which were later printed under the title Memoirs Of A Time Of Immaturity. From the moment of this literary debut, his reviews and columns started appearing in the press, mainly in the Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier). He met with other young writers and intellectuals forming an artistic café society in Zodiak and Ziemiańska, both in Warsaw. The publication of Ferdydurke, his first novel, brought him acclaim in literary circles.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Gombrowicz took part in the maiden voyage of the Polish cruise liner, Chrobry, to South America. When he found out about the outbreak of war in Europe, he decided to wait in Buenos Aires till the war was over, but was actually to stay there until 1963 — often, especially during the war, in great poverty.
At the end of the 1940s Gombrowicz was trying to gain a position among Argentine literary circles by publishing articles, giving lectures in Fray Mocho café, and finally, by publishing in 1947 a Spanish translation of Ferdydurke written with the help of Gombrowicz’s friends, among them Virgilio Piñera. Today, this version of the novel is considered to be a significant literary event in the history of Argentine literature; however, when published it did not bring any great renown to the author, nor did the publication of Gombrowicz’s drama Ślub in Spanish (The Wedding, El Casamiento) in 1948. From December 1947 to May 1955 Gombrowicz worked as a bank clerk in Banco Polaco, the Argentine branch of PeKaO SA Bank. In 1950 he started exchanging letters with Jerzy Giedroyc and from 1951 he started having works published in the Parisian journal Culture, where, in 1953, fragments of Dziennik (Diaries) appeared. In the same year he published a volume of work which included the drama Ślub (The Wedding) and the novel Trans-Atlantyk, where the subject of national identity on emigration was controversially raised. After October 1956 four books written by Gombrowicz appeared in Poland and they brought him great renown despite the fact that the authorities did not allow the publication of Dziennik (Diaries), and later organized
When he returned to Poland he began applying for legal positions with little success. In the 1920s he started writing, but soon rejected the legendary novel, whose form and subject matter were supposed to manifest his 'worse' and darker side of nature. Similarly, his attempt to write a popular novel in collaboration with Tadeusz Kępiński turned out to be a failure. At the turn of the 20's and 30's he started to write short stories, which were later printed under the title Memoirs Of A Time Of Immaturity. From the moment of this literary debut, his reviews and columns started appearing in the press, mainly in the Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier). He met with other young writers and intellectuals forming an artistic café society in Zodiak and Ziemiańska, both in Warsaw. The publication of Ferdydurke, his first novel, brought him acclaim in literary circles.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Gombrowicz took part in the maiden voyage of the Polish cruise liner, Chrobry, to South America. When he found out about the outbreak of war in Europe, he decided to wait in Buenos Aires till the war was over, but was actually to stay there until 1963 — often, especially during the war, in great poverty.
At the end of the 1940s Gombrowicz was trying to gain a position among Argentine literary circles by publishing articles, giving lectures in Fray Mocho café, and finally, by publishing in 1947 a Spanish translation of Ferdydurke written with the help of Gombrowicz’s friends, among them Virgilio Piñera. Today, this version of the novel is considered to be a significant literary event in the history of Argentine literature; however, when published it did not bring any great renown to the author, nor did the publication of Gombrowicz’s drama Ślub in Spanish (The Wedding, El Casamiento) in 1948. From December 1947 to May 1955 Gombrowicz worked as a bank clerk in Banco Polaco, the Argentine branch of PeKaO SA Bank. In 1950 he started exchanging letters with Jerzy Giedroyc and from 1951 he started having works published in the Parisian journal Culture, where, in 1953, fragments of Dziennik (Diaries) appeared. In the same year he published a volume of work which included the drama Ślub (The Wedding) and the novel Trans-Atlantyk, where the subject of national identity on emigration was controversially raised. After October 1956 four books written by Gombrowicz appeared in Poland and they brought him great renown despite the fact that the authorities did not allow the publication of Dziennik (Diaries), and later organized
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
March 3, 2009
so far i've finished Cosmos. Taking a little break now. This was possibly the most disturbing story I've ever read. Not so much a mystery, not so much a story, sort of a step by step detailed description of how mediocrity can easily lead to insanity. kind of upsetting in a way, but with some really incredible moments.
January 10, 2008
I was recently reminded of this book. I bought it as a teenager because the two titles seemed to be a perfect summation of my mind's competing interests at the time. I remember COSMOS to be one of the funniest things I'd ever read. It's Kafka without legitimate horror, and Proust without legitimate desire; somehow, the book doesn't get engulfed by those two influences. The ending is one of the great metaphysical jokes of all time.
July 31, 2007
Nightmarish and hilarious. The novel exploits the idea that our minds interpret the world by making meaningful connections--between words and objects, causes and effects, before and after, etc. What's the difference between a "meaningful connection" and "paranoia"?
July 15, 2016
While "Cosmos" is sufficiently excellent, "Pornografia" is an effervescent, fearless exploration of the dire potentials of decentralised existential meaning. Modernist genius at its finest, and not for the faint of heart. Bravo!
November 30, 2009
This is an amazing read. And proof- as if we needed it- that Eastern Europe pretty much corners literature.
November 2, 2021
both of these novels are pretty contrived and long winded (despite neither of them clocking in over 200 pages). but they are also pretty funny, in a fatalistic eastern european way
June 29, 2012
These two novels are both exercises in the absurd; taut and paranoic with a thick streak of black humor. I particularly enjoyed the symbiotic relationship between the younger and older characters in 'Pornografia'. You have the interesting case of Frederick and the narrator corrupting and manipulating the two youths through whom they live vicariously but the issue can also be considered in reverse; Karol and Henia playing up to the expectations of the elders and manipulating them. Then you have the relationship between the narrator and Frederick which has shades of rivalry and is characterized by subtle mind games. All this tension slowly builds toward a violent conclusion but the ending was far from satisfying in my opinion.
September 15, 2023
On it's most basic terms, Cosmos is a character study of a paranoid pervert. A quiet and irritable student who takes residence with a family in the polish countryside and searches for something to fill his time. There is an obsessive impotence that prevails in every aspect of the novel. Much of the work consists of an internal monologue attempting to connect all things in a system of signs and patterns, all the while lamenting the bare absurdity and futility of the act. Through an obsession with the mouths of both the housekeeper and the host's daughter, one of several threads the narrator comes to focus on, Gombrowicz expresses that to search for meaning is an inherently perverse act. To ascribe meaning to the chaos of the world is to impose that meaning onto an unknowing other, for no purpose other that the masturbatory self-satisfaction of seeing a pattern completed. Voyeurism at it's most bare. While I find the ideas Gombrowicz presents in Cosmos interesting and worth examining, it simply felt like a chore to read from beginning to end. I had much higher hopes for enjoying it. On it's own I would give 2 stars.
Pornografia, on the other hand, was an absolute page turner. Both novels have a roughly similar core of psychosexual obsession developing out of boredom in the polish countryside. Pornografia follows two aging intellectuals who become obsessed with the idea that two teenagers would make a good couple. What makes Pornografia so much more enjoyable to me is simply that characters have more interaction with each other, whereas in Cosmos each is almost entirely separated. It lends the novel a conspiratorial tone that I felt was sorely lacking in Cosmos.
Pornografia is similarly about psychosexual fixation, focusing on youth and agency. It questions the extent to which children are deprived of agency for their own good or for the pleasure of those who wield power, positing social reproduction as an inherently perverse act in much the same way Cosmos views the search for meaning. Similarly, it toys with the concept of innocence, asking if there even is such a thing or whether it is merely a faint dream of those who believe to have lost it.
Of the two I would only really recommend Pornografia. I'd give it 4 stars, and will probably read it again someday. Its humorous, disgusting, and perhaps even lends some insight into how the second world war made everyone obsessive perverts.
Pornografia, on the other hand, was an absolute page turner. Both novels have a roughly similar core of psychosexual obsession developing out of boredom in the polish countryside. Pornografia follows two aging intellectuals who become obsessed with the idea that two teenagers would make a good couple. What makes Pornografia so much more enjoyable to me is simply that characters have more interaction with each other, whereas in Cosmos each is almost entirely separated. It lends the novel a conspiratorial tone that I felt was sorely lacking in Cosmos.
Pornografia is similarly about psychosexual fixation, focusing on youth and agency. It questions the extent to which children are deprived of agency for their own good or for the pleasure of those who wield power, positing social reproduction as an inherently perverse act in much the same way Cosmos views the search for meaning. Similarly, it toys with the concept of innocence, asking if there even is such a thing or whether it is merely a faint dream of those who believe to have lost it.
Of the two I would only really recommend Pornografia. I'd give it 4 stars, and will probably read it again someday. Its humorous, disgusting, and perhaps even lends some insight into how the second world war made everyone obsessive perverts.
August 7, 2021
Something I read somewhere prompted me to seek out this book. I stared at it for a couple of weeks before picking it up one evening at bedtime and read it instead of sleeping. That was three months ago and I´ve been wrestling with what to say since then. The two novels are different but their effect is the same: I was left wondering why I felt I needed to read this. Looking at all the five star reviews here I understand that some people relate to this genre and apparently this author is a paragon of wit in this circle. I also concede that I am insufficiently grounded in this genre to make any meaningful kind of observation beyond how it impacted me.
In a word, it´s absurdism. It so closely reminded me of early Bergman films and the ¨Waiting for Godot¨ movie that in my mind, as I was reading, the imagery was in black and white. As absurdist literature goes, this is competently written. I can find no fault in it technically. I can place it on the literary genre tree historically. When read in the context of the time in which they were written, the influence of that period is both obvious and absent (absurd again), I can sense the author is wrestling with understanding what´s happening about him, while the actual writing avoids acknowledging it directly, making it all the more obvious in it´s absence.
While the books do a good job of highlighting just how absurd life was at that moment of time, what we´ve endured that last five years takes absurdity to such dizzying new heights that the books seem quaint (I think they´re intended to be horrifying). Such is the new reality we live in. But again, these are my perceptions. I don´t think it´s fair to judge hundred year old books by modern standards.
Finally, I am averse to absurdism, so it truly is my fault for wading through these books thinking it was going to be something else. If anything, they have cemented my loathing of absurdism as a genre and inoculated me against reading (or watching) any more of it in whatever future remains to me. I can figure out even how to rate it. It deserves more than one star. Three would seem too much, unless it´s a qualified three (ambivalent). I can´t recommend it to anyone, or lend it out, I´d rather give it away. I suspect that´s what will happen. Absurdism, meet realism, which is where I live.
In a word, it´s absurdism. It so closely reminded me of early Bergman films and the ¨Waiting for Godot¨ movie that in my mind, as I was reading, the imagery was in black and white. As absurdist literature goes, this is competently written. I can find no fault in it technically. I can place it on the literary genre tree historically. When read in the context of the time in which they were written, the influence of that period is both obvious and absent (absurd again), I can sense the author is wrestling with understanding what´s happening about him, while the actual writing avoids acknowledging it directly, making it all the more obvious in it´s absence.
While the books do a good job of highlighting just how absurd life was at that moment of time, what we´ve endured that last five years takes absurdity to such dizzying new heights that the books seem quaint (I think they´re intended to be horrifying). Such is the new reality we live in. But again, these are my perceptions. I don´t think it´s fair to judge hundred year old books by modern standards.
Finally, I am averse to absurdism, so it truly is my fault for wading through these books thinking it was going to be something else. If anything, they have cemented my loathing of absurdism as a genre and inoculated me against reading (or watching) any more of it in whatever future remains to me. I can figure out even how to rate it. It deserves more than one star. Three would seem too much, unless it´s a qualified three (ambivalent). I can´t recommend it to anyone, or lend it out, I´d rather give it away. I suspect that´s what will happen. Absurdism, meet realism, which is where I live.
October 16, 2017
This book has two novels. While they are two separate stories, there's a lot of overlap in the style. Sentences seem to construct and deconstruct as they go. "He was tall, but also short," except done in a more interesting way. While I enjoyed both books, I don't know that I would recommend them. They feel suspiciously like bad translations.
The following text appears before COSMOS:
"This version by Eric Mosbacher made from the French translation by Georges Sedir and the German translation (Indizen) by Walter Tiel."
The original text was in Polish. So I can't help but feel I'm getting a game of broken telephone. It's hard to tell what the emotions were supposed to be like in the story. All the same, Cosmos was interesting and weird. If I had to summarize it, the story is about pattern recognition gone bezerk. And yet the book isn't dry. It's fun to read.
PORNOGRAFIA is similar in theme. Characters pursue a quest of uniting a young couple, romantically. Because it has to happen, for some reason. And yet, this is no silly little comedy. It's dark and weird and ponderous. Despite the title, this is not a dirty book. The author (or translator, anyway) doesn't even use "bad words". Again, the translation feels off. This novel is translated from the French by Alistair Hamilton. And he clearly made some choices, because I doubt very much that the original Polish novel had the words "fait accompli" in it, as well as other French expressions left untranslated.
Prior to PONOGRAPHIA is a statement from the author (also translated from French) in which he compares himself to existentialism, and talks about the "philosophy" of the novel. That's the territory we're in -- books that have to MEAN something very profound. But the author, even as he compares himself to Sartre, tries to distance himself from the philosophy world.
Who are these novels for? Who would I recommend them to? Why did I even read them? I grabbed the book at random somewhere. I think in a bookstore in Philadelphia. And that made the random oddity of the two novels all the more interesting, to me. They are weird books.
The following text appears before COSMOS:
"This version by Eric Mosbacher made from the French translation by Georges Sedir and the German translation (Indizen) by Walter Tiel."
The original text was in Polish. So I can't help but feel I'm getting a game of broken telephone. It's hard to tell what the emotions were supposed to be like in the story. All the same, Cosmos was interesting and weird. If I had to summarize it, the story is about pattern recognition gone bezerk. And yet the book isn't dry. It's fun to read.
PORNOGRAFIA is similar in theme. Characters pursue a quest of uniting a young couple, romantically. Because it has to happen, for some reason. And yet, this is no silly little comedy. It's dark and weird and ponderous. Despite the title, this is not a dirty book. The author (or translator, anyway) doesn't even use "bad words". Again, the translation feels off. This novel is translated from the French by Alistair Hamilton. And he clearly made some choices, because I doubt very much that the original Polish novel had the words "fait accompli" in it, as well as other French expressions left untranslated.
Prior to PONOGRAPHIA is a statement from the author (also translated from French) in which he compares himself to existentialism, and talks about the "philosophy" of the novel. That's the territory we're in -- books that have to MEAN something very profound. But the author, even as he compares himself to Sartre, tries to distance himself from the philosophy world.
Who are these novels for? Who would I recommend them to? Why did I even read them? I grabbed the book at random somewhere. I think in a bookstore in Philadelphia. And that made the random oddity of the two novels all the more interesting, to me. They are weird books.
November 4, 2019
Grove Press issued the last two novels of Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz sometime in the mid 1990's.
"Cosmos" is the last novel Gombrowicz wrote and is a 'metaphysical' mystery with two young students residing in the Polish countryside in a family-run pension. The first person narrative of one of the students is consistent, and details everything about him and his pal Fuchs's experience. Eventually the novel becomes a claustrophobic experience with a hung sparrow, the weird family running the pension and nearly everything else.
"Pornografia" is another similar narrative involving two middle aged men in the countryside, Frederick and the unnamed narrator (beginning to see a pattern yet?) escaping the dark days of WWII and trying to manipulate two younger people. Or at least they think they do.....
Through it all, Gombrowicz is rather trying to read and while these novels are considered post-modern classics, I had a trying time reading both of them back to back. The writer's seeming contempt for people (or at least his hapless characters) reminds me of Sade crossed with Robbe-Grillet (eroticism crossed with encyclopedic examination of daily minutiae). Perhaps there was a vogue for this type of writing when these novels appeared in the 1960's, but I believe that time has passed.
"Cosmos" was made into a 2015 movie by the late great Polish director Andrezj Zulawski - the film's absurdist tone is nearly missing from the novel. Pity.
"Cosmos" is the last novel Gombrowicz wrote and is a 'metaphysical' mystery with two young students residing in the Polish countryside in a family-run pension. The first person narrative of one of the students is consistent, and details everything about him and his pal Fuchs's experience. Eventually the novel becomes a claustrophobic experience with a hung sparrow, the weird family running the pension and nearly everything else.
"Pornografia" is another similar narrative involving two middle aged men in the countryside, Frederick and the unnamed narrator (beginning to see a pattern yet?) escaping the dark days of WWII and trying to manipulate two younger people. Or at least they think they do.....
Through it all, Gombrowicz is rather trying to read and while these novels are considered post-modern classics, I had a trying time reading both of them back to back. The writer's seeming contempt for people (or at least his hapless characters) reminds me of Sade crossed with Robbe-Grillet (eroticism crossed with encyclopedic examination of daily minutiae). Perhaps there was a vogue for this type of writing when these novels appeared in the 1960's, but I believe that time has passed.
"Cosmos" was made into a 2015 movie by the late great Polish director Andrezj Zulawski - the film's absurdist tone is nearly missing from the novel. Pity.
June 15, 2023
So here are my thoughts. As a whole it was an interesting decision to have both books in one edition. Because I felt that the second book was so similar that I could finish it. The main character had that same angst to him and the exposition was very similar that I just could care to read what seemed like such a similar story. But I really enjoyed the first book. It was similar to catcher in the rye and the stranger but added it’s own twist to viewing the world as a whole that was so unique. And the story was so strange that I felt propelled to read just to know how things would occur. And I well written book seeps into your own life and I definitely felt like I started to see patterns in my daily life
February 14, 2021
Wow, I really love this guy. None of his books seem to have even remotely plausible premises, yet they are sustained by some absolutely wicked humor and some obsessive, well-drawn characters who spend as much as time trying to justify their own existences as that of others. Ordinarily modernist-existential novels of this stripe can get a bit dull, and lord knows I've read enough of them, but Gombrowicz breaks out of this rut in style.
November 4, 2008
Right from the beginning, you get the sense of how much is fastened, rattling, to the train of this man's thought. A sentence from page two:
"I wondered, standing in the midst of this chaos, this proliferating vegetation with its endless complications, my head full of the rattle and clatter of the nightlong train journey, insufficient sleep, the air and the sun and the tramp through the heat with this man Fuchs, and Jesia and my mother, the row about the letter and my rudeness to the old man, and Julius, and also Fuchs's troubles with his chief at the office (about which he had told me), and the bad road, and the ruts and lumps of earth and heels, trouser-legs, stones and all this vegetation, all culminating like a crowd genuflecting before this hanged sparrow--reigning triumphant and eccentric over this outlandish spot."
The narrator obsessively accumulates arbitrary signifiers, shuffling every loose end back into play in an effort to make things cohere. When his associative chains threaten to disintegrate, he begins to act and advances the plot with his compulsive, crowded manifestations. On the one hand (via the character of Leo) eccentric, privately-gratifying constellations of meaning are presented in a disarmingly sympathetic manner that becomes almost celebratory in the final quirky moments. On the other hand, the narrator, last name Witold, grinds his teeth over his different obsessions to an uncomfortable degree; a fact that he acknowledges in scattered moments of especially self-aware narrative:
"I must stop connecting and associating."
"Such a continual accumulation and disintegration of things can hardly be called a story" And
"Oh, merciful, almighty God, why was it impossible to concentrate on anything?"
While the inevitability of Witold's relentless recombination of items (a hanged sparrow, a deformed lip, a pattern on the ceiling) gets a bit oppressive, there is a dependable vein of humor in "Cosmos" that makes it a pleasurable read. The characterisation of Leo's family, his maid, two newly-wedded couples, Witold's friend and a fidgety rural priest is distinct, detail-oriented and intense. Witold finds the comic elements of everyone who surrounds him and skewers them to the wall.
BIG CAVEAT: This book is called a "version" of "Cosmos" because it is a translation of two other translations (to English from the French and German translations from Polish). I'm not really comfortable with a text so far removed from the actual language of its author and I might not have purchased or read this "version" of the text if I had noticed what a game of telephone it has already passed through.
_____________[Review of "pornografia" forthcoming]___________
"Pornografia" is more entertaining than "Cosmos" and a better introduction to Gombrowicz. The narrator contextualizes his "feverish" excitability--the animating force, mirrored in Frederick, his peer, that bullies this story forward--by saying, "it must be understood that all this suddenly happened to me after stifling, gray years of horror and exhaustion, or of insane extravagance. During which I had almost forgotten what beauty was." Frederick and the narrator set about trying to manufacture beauty in a delusional and ruthless fashion, using all of the ancillary characters of the book to advance their scheme of prompting a young man and a young affianced woman to hook up with one another, simply on account of their proximity and youthful freshness.
As in "Cosmos," much of the reality is compiled and determined by two quite similar middle aged men with too much free time and great psychological insight with little psychological grip. A representative passage: "He was abject, humbly odious in this submission to his own horror--and his abjection contaminated me to such an extent that my own worms arose, crawled out, climbed up, and polluted my face. But that was not the limit of my humiliation. The sinister comicality of this situation was mainly due to the fact that we were like a couple of lovers deceived and rejected by another couple: our passion, our excitement had nothing on which to feed and now raged between us." "Sinister Comicality" may be the best overall descriptor of Gombrowicz's style. His protagonists are decidedly creepy, unstable looming voyeurs, who for all their menace are endearing for their superior intelligence and dependable wit.
Readers see everything from the perspective of these idle men, who are happy to introduce other characters in this fashion (of Hippolytus): "He looked as though he were bloated by a tumor that had distorted his limbs and stretched his flesh in every direction so that his repulsively flourishing body was like an erupting volcano of meat." And when this same man is speaking, "At the same time his disillusioned, implacably present face was a real insult to Amelia and her guests. The destructive force of his speech was inconceivable, and you could see this force, this marginal force, carry away the orator like a bolting horse." The humor in these excerpts is characteristic of "Pornografia," which for all it's violence and foul intent is lighter and more digestible than "Cosmos."
I wonder what influence Gombrowicz had on Thomas Bernhard.
"I wondered, standing in the midst of this chaos, this proliferating vegetation with its endless complications, my head full of the rattle and clatter of the nightlong train journey, insufficient sleep, the air and the sun and the tramp through the heat with this man Fuchs, and Jesia and my mother, the row about the letter and my rudeness to the old man, and Julius, and also Fuchs's troubles with his chief at the office (about which he had told me), and the bad road, and the ruts and lumps of earth and heels, trouser-legs, stones and all this vegetation, all culminating like a crowd genuflecting before this hanged sparrow--reigning triumphant and eccentric over this outlandish spot."
The narrator obsessively accumulates arbitrary signifiers, shuffling every loose end back into play in an effort to make things cohere. When his associative chains threaten to disintegrate, he begins to act and advances the plot with his compulsive, crowded manifestations. On the one hand (via the character of Leo) eccentric, privately-gratifying constellations of meaning are presented in a disarmingly sympathetic manner that becomes almost celebratory in the final quirky moments. On the other hand, the narrator, last name Witold, grinds his teeth over his different obsessions to an uncomfortable degree; a fact that he acknowledges in scattered moments of especially self-aware narrative:
"I must stop connecting and associating."
"Such a continual accumulation and disintegration of things can hardly be called a story" And
"Oh, merciful, almighty God, why was it impossible to concentrate on anything?"
While the inevitability of Witold's relentless recombination of items (a hanged sparrow, a deformed lip, a pattern on the ceiling) gets a bit oppressive, there is a dependable vein of humor in "Cosmos" that makes it a pleasurable read. The characterisation of Leo's family, his maid, two newly-wedded couples, Witold's friend and a fidgety rural priest is distinct, detail-oriented and intense. Witold finds the comic elements of everyone who surrounds him and skewers them to the wall.
BIG CAVEAT: This book is called a "version" of "Cosmos" because it is a translation of two other translations (to English from the French and German translations from Polish). I'm not really comfortable with a text so far removed from the actual language of its author and I might not have purchased or read this "version" of the text if I had noticed what a game of telephone it has already passed through.
_____________[Review of "pornografia" forthcoming]___________
"Pornografia" is more entertaining than "Cosmos" and a better introduction to Gombrowicz. The narrator contextualizes his "feverish" excitability--the animating force, mirrored in Frederick, his peer, that bullies this story forward--by saying, "it must be understood that all this suddenly happened to me after stifling, gray years of horror and exhaustion, or of insane extravagance. During which I had almost forgotten what beauty was." Frederick and the narrator set about trying to manufacture beauty in a delusional and ruthless fashion, using all of the ancillary characters of the book to advance their scheme of prompting a young man and a young affianced woman to hook up with one another, simply on account of their proximity and youthful freshness.
As in "Cosmos," much of the reality is compiled and determined by two quite similar middle aged men with too much free time and great psychological insight with little psychological grip. A representative passage: "He was abject, humbly odious in this submission to his own horror--and his abjection contaminated me to such an extent that my own worms arose, crawled out, climbed up, and polluted my face. But that was not the limit of my humiliation. The sinister comicality of this situation was mainly due to the fact that we were like a couple of lovers deceived and rejected by another couple: our passion, our excitement had nothing on which to feed and now raged between us." "Sinister Comicality" may be the best overall descriptor of Gombrowicz's style. His protagonists are decidedly creepy, unstable looming voyeurs, who for all their menace are endearing for their superior intelligence and dependable wit.
Readers see everything from the perspective of these idle men, who are happy to introduce other characters in this fashion (of Hippolytus): "He looked as though he were bloated by a tumor that had distorted his limbs and stretched his flesh in every direction so that his repulsively flourishing body was like an erupting volcano of meat." And when this same man is speaking, "At the same time his disillusioned, implacably present face was a real insult to Amelia and her guests. The destructive force of his speech was inconceivable, and you could see this force, this marginal force, carry away the orator like a bolting horse." The humor in these excerpts is characteristic of "Pornografia," which for all it's violence and foul intent is lighter and more digestible than "Cosmos."
I wonder what influence Gombrowicz had on Thomas Bernhard.
April 23, 2023
Two weird books. It’s sort of like reading a simple nightmare. No monsters, just strange people twisting in strange ways. I did find some portions confusing the way he wrote, but it was relatively easy to just skim those parts.
September 24, 2023
only read cosmos, didn't read pornografina.
cosmos was weird as hell and so i kinda figured ... i get it already ... i don't need to read the murder book too
i am glad i read it but probably wouldn't recommend it to many ppl
cosmos was weird as hell and so i kinda figured ... i get it already ... i don't need to read the murder book too
i am glad i read it but probably wouldn't recommend it to many ppl
November 17, 2020
comprado para ler "pornografia" (li "cosmos" há muitos anos). aquela maneira de narrar uma história é tão só dele...
November 10, 2021
Mishima would love Pornografia. I wonder if he ever encountered it in the few years before his end.
June 27, 2024
This guy is a freak and dgaf if you know
May 10, 2025
never had a book reach into my head and hold a mirror right up to my amygdala before Cosmos. now I have. thankfully I didn't get one quite as bad as Witold's.
July 9, 2012
Cosmos: Why is something something? Why did this or that thing happen? What does my perspective on things change what they are?
These are some of the weightier questions that ran through my head while I was reading this weird novel. Narrated by a man visiting a Polish household in the countryside where some quite inconsequential things happen, it adds up to a philosophical mystery - the Cosmos, in other words is where ultimately inconsequential stuff happens that only appears consequential due to our perspective.
The prose is a little like Paul Auster or Knut Hamsun - you absolutely never know where the author is going, which is one reason why I finished the book, that approach was interesting to me. However, due to the wackiness of the interior monologue a lot of readers will be left at the side of the road as the author goes on his way.
Pornographia: I got into this book much more than Cosmos. It is similar to Cosmos in that it throws two visitors from the city into a country village house. The main difference is that this visit takes place in occupied Poland in 1943 - which puts an edge on every action and motive. The Germans (and approaching Russians) are offstage during the novel, but the fact is that anything that might alert them to the household must be avoided - if only because there is no way to predict what could happen.
One of the main characters, Frederick, is a master manipulator that loves to involve others in his charades and fantasies. One might say he is a little fascist reflecting the monstrous Fascism they live under - I am sure this was intentional by Gombrowicz. The parallels of the household's intrigues to the greater situation reminds me a lot of Renoir's movie "The Rules of the Game": the village house, the thrown together mixture of people, the manufactured dramas, the mistaken identities leading to death and of course the allegory contained with the work.
The title "Pornografia" makes the book seem like it is going to be something different than it ends up to be. To me it referred to the impotent gaze and manufactured situations that obsessed Frederick and the narrator when they are manipulating the others in their dramas and it quite fits the creepiness they exhibit.
Gombrowicz's style is incredible, a writer could learn a lot from him. There are flashes of Nabokov without the look-at-me virtuoso feeling. Every sentence feels unexpected but after reading it you see how it fits. I did enjoy reading this book.
These are some of the weightier questions that ran through my head while I was reading this weird novel. Narrated by a man visiting a Polish household in the countryside where some quite inconsequential things happen, it adds up to a philosophical mystery - the Cosmos, in other words is where ultimately inconsequential stuff happens that only appears consequential due to our perspective.
The prose is a little like Paul Auster or Knut Hamsun - you absolutely never know where the author is going, which is one reason why I finished the book, that approach was interesting to me. However, due to the wackiness of the interior monologue a lot of readers will be left at the side of the road as the author goes on his way.
Pornographia: I got into this book much more than Cosmos. It is similar to Cosmos in that it throws two visitors from the city into a country village house. The main difference is that this visit takes place in occupied Poland in 1943 - which puts an edge on every action and motive. The Germans (and approaching Russians) are offstage during the novel, but the fact is that anything that might alert them to the household must be avoided - if only because there is no way to predict what could happen.
One of the main characters, Frederick, is a master manipulator that loves to involve others in his charades and fantasies. One might say he is a little fascist reflecting the monstrous Fascism they live under - I am sure this was intentional by Gombrowicz. The parallels of the household's intrigues to the greater situation reminds me a lot of Renoir's movie "The Rules of the Game": the village house, the thrown together mixture of people, the manufactured dramas, the mistaken identities leading to death and of course the allegory contained with the work.
The title "Pornografia" makes the book seem like it is going to be something different than it ends up to be. To me it referred to the impotent gaze and manufactured situations that obsessed Frederick and the narrator when they are manipulating the others in their dramas and it quite fits the creepiness they exhibit.
Gombrowicz's style is incredible, a writer could learn a lot from him. There are flashes of Nabokov without the look-at-me virtuoso feeling. Every sentence feels unexpected but after reading it you see how it fits. I did enjoy reading this book.
July 9, 2012
I read this book a few years back and kind of forgot about it. So far I have only re-read Cosmos and was so happy to remind myself how the story is so graceful with its dry observations and a mix of absurdly, hilarious points. Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything, and here we are in the middle of it trying to figure it out.
-"I had been ready for anything, but not for a teapot. Enough is enough, and this was the last straw. There is a sort of excess about reality, and after a certain point it can become intolerable." p.66
-"A growing distraction was associated with this, and there was nothing surprising about that, for excessive concentration leads to distraction, looking at one things masks everything else - when we stare at a single point on a map we are quite well aware that the others elude us." p.20
-"Nevertheless, in spite of all the talk and the noise, the whole thing was somehow hollow, incomplete, lacking in conviction, to such an extent that for a time I had the feeling that I was was looking at my companions and myself through the wrong end of a telescope or from a great distance, as if the whole thing were happening on the moon." p.106
-"I had been ready for anything, but not for a teapot. Enough is enough, and this was the last straw. There is a sort of excess about reality, and after a certain point it can become intolerable." p.66
-"A growing distraction was associated with this, and there was nothing surprising about that, for excessive concentration leads to distraction, looking at one things masks everything else - when we stare at a single point on a map we are quite well aware that the others elude us." p.20
-"Nevertheless, in spite of all the talk and the noise, the whole thing was somehow hollow, incomplete, lacking in conviction, to such an extent that for a time I had the feeling that I was was looking at my companions and myself through the wrong end of a telescope or from a great distance, as if the whole thing were happening on the moon." p.106
August 16, 2007
I liked this. I usually like goofy eastern european kafka-y novels that question my reality. because, after all, reality is just a function of the state, man. this one is from the dirty thirties and the land of poland (hey, how come the pope wore a funny hat? cuz he was a fuckin' polack and they're so goddamn dubm they also do stupid stuff that stands out like that, fuckin' polacks). anyway, this book is pretty short and hard to make sense of, which are both to its credit. it's a murder mystery where all the clues are undreadable -- like some unknown loon will hammer a rabbit to a barn door and or put two sticks in a weird formation out in the yard (these thing might be in the book or not i can't recall) -- and the guys who are all shook by the strange assortment of clues invent some sort context to keep the mystery alive. See, that's how language works, we make systems up because we gotta or we'd all be ordering purple for happy hour. I can't remember what happens after about half way through but I recall the end being crazy.
December 2, 2008
Both Cosmos and Pornografia start with a storyteller's "once upon a time" and feature the author-as-narrator stumbling to make sense of a reality clouded by obsession. In Cosmos, the narrative gluts with repetitive associations, hinged around hanging dead animals and a convergence of women's mouths in an enjoyably mystery that disappointingly never takes off. In Pornographia, the narrator's voyeuristic fixation on eking erotic experience from innocence is told with a pitching and doomed hysteria that is all the more enjoyable for achieving fruition.
Already similar, both novels also have character doubles of the narrator, but Pornographia's has balls and moves the narrative admirably, while the double in Cosmos rather resembles one of the buttered radishes the characters forever consume. If you pick this up, be aware that the text is a translation of a translation from Gombrowicz's Polish and read the second one first.
(Since Cosmos and Pornografia are essentially two novels, I allow myself to expand my usual three-sentence reviews to a liberal six.)
Already similar, both novels also have character doubles of the narrator, but Pornographia's has balls and moves the narrative admirably, while the double in Cosmos rather resembles one of the buttered radishes the characters forever consume. If you pick this up, be aware that the text is a translation of a translation from Gombrowicz's Polish and read the second one first.
(Since Cosmos and Pornografia are essentially two novels, I allow myself to expand my usual three-sentence reviews to a liberal six.)
August 7, 2007
The first book has especially followed me around. I am quite curious to re-read this by another translator, Danuta Borchardt.
August 10, 2007
Soooo funny. Bamberging the berg.....
Read
January 22, 2008I think oe of them is called a "gothic novel," and it's true!
May 27, 2008
Hold on to your sanity!
July 30, 2008
The lost son of Kafka. He dazzles with a freakishly dark humor and a head-spinning linguistic acrobatics.
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